What accounts for this gender difference? The linked NYT article slants toward the conventional journalistic assumption that women are better than men, but if you wanted to take the same material and slant it the other way, you could say women are more likely to retreat in the face of adversity and going to school feels safe and comfortable to women.

The article quotes an economist who says: "The jobs out there just aren’t very good, and men seem more willing to take them for whatever reason... The women are looking at those same jobs and saying, 'I’ll be more productive elsewhere.'"

More "productive" spending money than making money? This is the old stereotype that women work for personal satisfaction, and yet it's still supposed to be a mystery that men make more money than women. In fact, the article has the line "Already earning lower pay, women are less willing to work when wages fall further...." That might be switching around the cause and effect. Do women drop out of the labor market because they earn less money, or do they earn less money because they tend not to keep plugging away when things get tough?

IN THE COMMENTS: John Althouse Cohen — referring to "the conventional journalistic assumption that women are better than men" — says:

And why has this become the conventional assumption? It's based on old-school, pre-feminism gender stereotypes of men being tough and strong, while women are fragile and weak. Those who follow these stereotypes will be more willing to criticize men than women, since men can "take it," while women would crumble upon hearing any criticism.

Very few men would consider just quitting work. Men have too much of their value wrapped up in what they do to be doing nothing.

Don't let the generational blinders keep everything from you though. I know quite a few early twenty-something men who are more than happy to sit on their asses and game all day rather than get work they consider beneath them. When I encounter such, as seems far too often these days, I wonder how widespread it is.

The linked NYT article slants toward the conventional journalistic assumption that women are better than men

And why has this become the conventional assumption? It's based on old-school, pre-feminism gender stereotypes of men being tough and strong, while women are fragile and weak. Those who follow these stereotypes will be more willing to criticize men than women, since men can "take it," while women would crumble upon hearing any criticism.

So many things to comment about on this. First, the result of more women going back to get more schooling means that there will be more people trying to get positions with non-profits and/or 'policy' positions with state or Federal government. I've never seen a generation like the current one who seems to view profit with disgust, and while they want a 6 figure income, they'll feel less guilty about it if they are 'doing good'. This generation's view of 'doing good' does not involve actually taking a risk to create new goods and services, or employing dozens of people. Instead it involves deciding what's best for the rest of us- either by working out policies at a tax-payer funded desk, or by reaping the goodness that comes with working for a non-profit. Of course, those at the upper levels of the non-profit make a large salary, but it's for a non-profit so they cannot be accused of being greedy.

The schools years ago focused on the young girls who were, so it is said, being ignored and not encouraged to move forward. This is probably true. However, I suspect the result has been the denigration of the male side at all levels- to the point where the men now pursue less additional schooling, fewer grad degrees, and yet still have the need to 'work hard and provide'. So, yes, if there's a job offered out there, the men figure, I can take this, make a living, work hard, and climb my way up the ladder. Right or wrong, that is the approach. Today's women see themselves as special, wonderful, and overall here to correct 10 centuries of male abuse and mistakes. They expect to have a higher position without the wait to achieve it. And they see the additional schooling as the guarantor of that.

The problem is that we are at the cusp of a Higher Ed bubble- just in time to make many of those degrees much more common, with less worth in the marketplace. Your own field of law, Professor, has had quite a bit of personnel bleeding over the past couple of years. This may not be slowing down the pace of entrants into law schools, but it may surprise the eventual graduates as to the worth of their time and effort spent. It may not pan out the way they expect it to.

Journalism seems to be the one area where they can continue to crank out people who can get jobs with no apparent market worth.

Spending the amount of money required to get a degree right now with a very poor outlook for employment strikes me as high risk.

Amen times ten. In fact, one thing that jumped out in the linked article was that the woman was going back to school to get her master's and then hoped to get into communications for a non-profit. Then, in the final grafs, she says she's going to be about $200K in debt!

Since no one else seems to have been honest with her, I'll tell her that she is more likely to be struck by lightning while being attacked by a shark before she'll be able to provide for herself on a non-profit salary scale. So she has 2 options: get a much-better paying job in the private sector, or marry someone who has a white-collar job in the private sector.

In my extended family there are two very recent UW graduates, one male and one female. Neither has found a career-oriented job fitting with his or her major.

The female, after five years of undergraduate study, has returned to live at home with her parents "until something good turns up", in part because, she says, she feels safe and secure there. She's also taking grad school admission tests and badgering her parents to fund her (third) trip overseas. She works part-time as a waitress.

The male, after five years of undergraduate study, remains in Madison and works two different part-time jobs, one in a bar the other in a restaurant. He lives in a crowded house and pays his own rent. He says "I couldn't accept the humiliation of having to move in with my parents at my age, so I'll work at whatever jobs I can find until something better comes along." He's considering graduate school "but only if it makes sense, and if I can keep working full-time."

They are both smart kids, both had tough majors in non-liberal arts fields of study. One wants to be coddled; the other can't stand the idea.

Or she can default on her loan, which could be the next big shoe to drop after the bottom fell out of the housing market. I'm not sure if student loans even approach the total capitalization of the mortgage market, but I think we'll be seeing a lot more stories in the future about student loan defaults.

1. What's with the five year undergrad thing? I have two 27 year old daughters. There were on the four year plan. Mom and Dad paying most of four years of college, then you're on your own. They both "managed" to graduate in four years - one went to "winter school" to get it done.

2. Said "girls" graduated, came home for a couple of months. Established themselves in a decent job. Moved out. Living on their own. Makes a Tank proud. Two young adults.

From the article: Those attending more expensive private schools, like Ms. Baker, will have an even tougher time guaranteeing that their educational investment pays off. Including the loans that financed her undergraduate education at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, she will complete her master’s program next year owing about $200,000 in debt.

It's a headbangingly stupid article, filled with false "facts" and internal contradictions. Here's a false fact joined to a failure of insight in just one paragraph:

Already earning lower pay, women are less willing to work when wages fall further.... Women are also more reluctant to work night or weekend shifts,

Meanwhile, Ms. Baker, with her $200,000 in loans should read the New York Times:

Men are generally "tougher" than women. But the biggest difference I found from supervising both sexes is how they handle criticism. Men do not take it so personally. Beyond that, women tend to hold grudges and react passive-aggressively. If a man doesn't like a criticism then he'll voice that, sometimes loudly, and it's over. Much easier to deal with and certainly much healthier than women who don't express their anger.

Tank - I don't know why it took them five years, but I suspect that not knowing what one's major is until one's junior year had something to do with it.

Mine were four-and-out. One needed summer sessions (IT major), the other didn't (math major). One difference was that they attended smaller universities where it was possible to take required classes without waiting in line for a section to open up.

Plus they knew with certainty when they'd no longer be on the household payroll. ;)

And I'm with Campy -- congratulations to J.A.C. for ingeniously finding a way to spin the constant belittling of men and praise of women into yet another way women are victimized by our terribly unfair (to women! only! always!) society.

toby said: the biggest difference I found from supervising both sexes is how they handle criticism. Men do not take it so personally. Beyond that, women tend to hold grudges and react passive-aggressively.

In the workplace, I beg for criticism. Even if I'm already doing fine, I still want to know how I can do better. But I rarely can get someone to directly state something that they wish I would do differently. I often wonder if this is because of my female peers and their often ridiculous reactions to it.

Tank - I don't know why it took them five years, but I suspect that not knowing what one's major is until one's junior year had something to do with it.

I've got a 2, 4, and 7 year old. My wife and I, God love her, are completely on the same page in regards to college. Assuming things will be roughly the same in ten years (who really knows?), we've decided that college is too expensive to pay for simply to go when the kids graduate high school. If one of them has demonstrated in high school that they are self-discipline enough to handle it and express strong desire, fine. We'll look at it. I am not, however, going to send a kid to college who's got C's and B's in high school and isn't quite sure what they want to do. It's simply too expensive for that.

Otherwise, they can join the service (a family tradition) or go get a job. If they're under my roof after 18 and not in college, they're going to be paying rent.

fivewheels said congratulations to J.A.C. for ingeniously finding a way to spin the constant belittling of men and praise of women into yet another way women are victimized by our terribly unfair (to women! only! always!) society.

I may have misunderstood, but I took JAC's comment to be a critique of feminism (and how it wants to claim equality, but always asks for kid-glove treatment), not a spin on how unfair things are to women. (That's my opinion on the matter, at least.)

Scott M. said: am not, however, going to send a kid to college who's got C's and B's in high school and isn't quite sure what they want to do. It's simply too expensive for that.

Neither of my parents went to college, and money was really tight, so I always knew that it was going to be up to me to find a way to go on my own (I never considered not going an option, though I think my parents would have been fine if I hadn't).

Now, I'm very academically oriented, and was very successful in school. I earned a full scholarship (to an inexpensive state school) easily. (This was 1998.)

My preference would be to expect and demand that my children do the same (even if I can, knock on wood, afford it). But I still have that nagging doubt that that might be unrealistic in some way, and that I'd just wind up sticking my kids with the horrible loans that we keep hearing about.

Lyssa: If so, then I misread the intent, but it did come off to me, and apparently campy, as highlighting unfortunate (for women) stereotypes. Also, regardless of intent, that would be an argument that defies Occam's Razor.

But I still have that nagging doubt that that might be unrealistic in some way, and that I'd just wind up sticking my kids with the horrible loans that we keep hearing about.

My oldest, 20, from my first marriage, was planning on going into the army until his mother got to work on him his senior year of high school. She, along with the money on her side of the family, convinced him to go to college because, as she yelled at me once, he is her only child and she didn't want him dying overseas somewhere. Now, when he should be a junior, this average HS-grade young man is still undeclared and will be forced out of school due to sub-2.0 GPA. He simply wasn't ready to go.

If he had gone the other route, he would be two years into a four year tour with a signing bonus of $10k in the bank, over $30k in government cash waiting for him to go to school on, and, as he's an Illinois resident, the ability to attend any state school he can get accepted at for free tuition and fees (which, at a couple of them, includes books). Basically, he would be surviving college, fully paid for, with a "paycheck" of over $1000 per month for beer money. Not to mention that he would probably have a nice set of electronics, clothes, a car, etc, that guys in their first tour tend to accumulate.

It simply would have been a better deal for him and probably have knocked some sense into him as well.

What if women (the majority of women) never really wanted to go to work? What if a combination of a bad economy (8% unemployment as "new normal") and a weak feminist movement is bringing about a sort of tipping point to feminism ante.

My preference would be to expect and demand that my children do the same (even if I can, knock on wood, afford it). But I still have that nagging doubt that that might be unrealistic in some way, and that I'd just wind up sticking my kids with the horrible loans that we keep hearing about.

There's nothing wrong with a trade. My master plumbing license almost guarantees me employment. I'll never own a mansion & BMW, but my colonial & Chevy are just fine.

This is one of those NYT stories you can tell is the product of a narrative promoted by an organization, in this case the Council on Contemporary Families, around which all the other sources are lined up to support.

Notice even the young woman they spoke to is going $200k in debt to obtain a "master’s degree [that] will help her get a job running communications at a nonprofit group."

The cycle of bullshit and spending other people's money, they hope, will continue.

On Friday Sept. 7, both houses of Congress approved a conference committee report including employees of 501(c)(3) organizations as ‘public sector’ employees for purposes of a new loan forgiveness provision. Among numerous other provisions (see below), the legislation defines employment by 501(c)(3) tax exempt organizations as a ‘public sector job’ making the individual eligible for loan balance forgiveness after 10 years of payments under an income contingent repayment plan.

Not sure what happened here (without going to Thomas), but it looks like the bill would forgive student debt remaining after paying for 10 years, if the borrower worked for a non-profit, many of which are quite far to the left - which is why this was passed after the Dems retook Congress in 2007. And, if they don't work for a non-profit or a government, the student debts are never discharged. Great way to grow the economy - give an incentive to work for the non-producing parts of the economy over those who create wealth. But, that, of course, is how a lot on the left, and, esp. President Obama, seem to think is the best way to encourage economic growth.

This generation's view of 'doing good' does not involve actually taking a risk to create new goods and services, or employing dozens of people.

Or, technically, even actually "doing good". Shutting down land for development because a rare bug lives there isn't a good thing by any rational measure.

So, yes, if there's a job offered out there, the men figure, I can take this, make a living, work hard, and climb my way up the ladder. Right or wrong, that is the approach.

I'd also state that a woman ACCUSING (no actual proof needed) a man of sexual misconduct can basically ruin their academic career --- a lot of men don't want to deal with the headache of that nonsense any longer.

Oh, absolutely. My husband is basically a tradesman (sort of), and I have the utmost respect for it. I would have no problem encouraging my kids to go into trades if that was something that they were interested in. Although, if they inherit their mom's total lack of hand-eye coordination, it might not be such a good idea. :)

But I rarely can get someone to directly state something that they wish I would do differently. I often wonder if this is because of my female peers and their often ridiculous reactions to it.

Lyssa, my experience is that men, especially college-educated and in white collar settings, have been completely conditioned to not offend women. Also I've offered constructive critiques when prompted, and still have caused wounded feelings because it wasn't quite the criticism they were looking for.

To be fair, it's also not completely unique to women. College-educated men can be overly-sensitive to criticism as well. The more initials after your name, the more likely you are to consider yourself an unassailable expert in your field, and thus more immune to criticism.

These types avoid conflict at all costs. One thing I try to do is instigate a little healthy conflict. As Ann has noted, and I concur, lefties suck at arguing. The S. Jobs bio touches heavily on how Jobs relentlessly questioned assumptions in attempts to make the end result the best it could be. Most businesses don't know how to engender that type of creative conflict. I suspect Apple will eventually lose that edge without Jobs around.

This isn't happening in a vacuum. Does the article even mention that we're in the Great Obama Depression? When 500 people line up for 1 job going back to school starts looking pretty good, especially for all those women whose incomes are supplementary not primary.

My two year old boy is showing signs of ambidexterity. If that ends up being the case, I'll do everything I can to raise a pitcher and hope for a sweet five-year multi-million dollar deal to play for the Cardinals. Mmmm, indeed.

[her] Oh, I make $32k a year. You?[he] I make $55k. But how did you afford to go back for the degree? It must be expensive.[her] Yeah, I have $198k of federally nondischarable debt I am paying off. Bob?, Bob? Where are you going??

"So, yes, if there's a job offered out there, the men figure, I can take this, make a living, work hard, and climb my way up the ladder."

Interestingly, many of the commenters on the NYT site see this as a negative. Because the men will remain stuck in "dead end jobs" while the women, armed with their higher degrees, will go on to those high-paying non-profit jobs. (In a reasonable world, that would be an oxymoron.)

If a woman is divorced and/or has children, various governments and non-profits fall all over themselves to hand out money. Not so much with men. (Incidentally, my oldest daughter has also made that point independent of me. She's noted that she can get all sorts of financial aid, but for her husband to go to advanced welding training can get diddly squat.)

Let's go back to Tim Allen: "Women now have choices. They can be married, not married, have a job, not have a job, be married with children, unmarried with children. Men have the same choice we've always had: work or prison."

Well, honestly, I meant it more as a lefty pitcher than ambi. We had a guy in high school that was an ambi pitcher and was being scouted as early as senior year. He covered the plate on a pass ball (the catcher's fault on that one) and the guy sliding in from third broke his tibia, compound fracture. He didn't play again until semi-pro in his late twenties, but by then it was over for him as far as the "big show" is concerned.

It's still called the man-cession, I believe, but women may be going back to school because they know they can come back and get a better job.

Men don't seem to have that freedom, so the quote is a crock. Most of the people who have "left the workforce" have exhausted their 99 weeks of unemployment and aren't counted by Chicago-on-the-Potomac, enabling GodZero to claim a U3 of 8.6 instead of 11.

I got the snark. You just made me realize that switch hitting is a common skill and highly valued, but when I tried to think of a 'switch-pitcher' I couldn't come up with any. There was a guy in the 80's or 90's named Greg Harris who was reputed to be able to 'switch-pitch', but I don't know if he ever did in a real ML game.

If a woman is divorced and/or has children, various governments and non-profits fall all over themselves to hand out money.

The final straw the motivated me to quit the AARP (before the Obamacare kerfuffle) was noticing they had a scholarship program for women 40 years old and above. Nothing for men. Plus, the AARP is supposed to be an organization working for retired persons. You have to be 55 to join. Why aren't they using this money for people 55 and above?

Laura Baker is smart. She's borrowed $200,000 to get a relatively low-paying job in the nonprofit sector, if everything works out. That sounds like a losing proposition to most. But she'll pay only 15% of her discretionary income (income over 150% of poverty) each month, and will pay that for 10 years. After ten years, the debt goes away. She'd be wise to run up $300,000. Or, heck, why not $400,000? It's all the same to her. She's not paying it back.

Years ago social critic George Guilder nailed the sociocultural aspects of the male-female work divide when he observed about what was socially "acceptable" in society's eyes: "Women have there choices: They can work; they can not work, or they can work some and not work some. Men have three choices also: They can work; they can work, and they can work."

It is a complex issue that goes beyond gender to some extent. Corporations claimed they can not find enough skilled or STEM workers. In reality the job market often requires IT and STEM skills and perhaps more women realize they can only take advantage of those opportunities if they get more education, while some men are less willing, or able, to take the time to re-train themselves.

Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've *worked* in the private sector. They expect *results*.

Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've *worked* in the private sector. They expect *results*.

Let's face it, for most people school is a hang out point while they wait to grow up or figure out what they want to do with themselves.

Except for those who are genuinely curious about some field and driven to study it, it's largely a waste of time. (It can even be a waste of time for the former now that everyone is encouraged to go.) The only reason most jobs want to see degrees on resumes is because of a degree's correlation with other good qualities.

We have young sons. The current plan is to provide an extremely rigorous K-12 education that includes basic trade skills in high school. Then they can go off and be, do, or study whatever they want, but they'll always be employable.

I like it that Freeman is describing her "current" plan for educating her boys. Circumstances change, as do perceptions of circumstances. The boys themselves will be the biggest agents of these changes.

I got the snark. You just made me realize that switch hitting is a common skill and highly valued, but when I tried to think of a 'switch-pitcher' I couldn't come up with any. There was a guy in the 80's or 90's named Greg Harris who was reputed to be able to 'switch-pitch', but I don't know if he ever did in a real ML game.

Sammy Stewart allegedly, but Earl Weaver wouldn't let him try it in a game. Look where he ended up though.

So, they choose to delay forming families (until an age where reproduction occurs at greater risk to both the mother and child; and the costs of which are passed on to to society) and simultaneously and voluntarily decide to accumulate debt.

I wonder if they are among the "occupy" crowd who protest distortion of educational loan pricing. Maybe they are just following the example set by the "best and brightest", and have similarly misclassified and misunderstood "debt". Then again, perhaps they are not a progressive burden on society, and are funding their ventures with previously acquired savings (i.e. capital).

Let the social and biological experiment continue. If it continues to fail, and the Hispanics have not been completely corrupted through a selective rule of law, then America's heirs are waiting.

I wonder if they are among the "occupy" crowd who protest distortion of educational loan pricing. Maybe they are just following the example set by the "best and brightest", and have similarly misclassified and misunderstood "debt".

Lyssa, I chuckled when I read your take. You are very perceptive. I had a female employee once ask me for a critique. She was a good employee, not the best but in the upper 20% or so. So, I gave her an honest critique, I started out w/ her strong points and then gave her a couple aspects that could be improved. I didn't know her well, she had only been w/ me for a couple months. It turned out she wanted a "perfect." She sulked for a few days. I learned to get to know female employees prior to falling into that trap again.